Messing With Mac (13 page)

“Thank God,” she panted, and when he lifted her up to the table, she spread her legs for him, sighing when he stepped between them and gripped her bare ass in his hands to hold her in place. Her head fell back on her shoulders, her eyes closed, her mouth open.

“Look at me,” he demanded, giving her a little shake until she blinked huge, desire-slumberous eyes at him. He rocked his hips, watching those eyes go opaque with need. “Can anyone else make you feel this way, Taylor? Anyone?” Another slow rock of his hips, and another moan tumbled from her lips. “Like you'd rather have this than breathe? Can they?”

“Mac…” She tried pulling him down to her, tried to wrap her legs around his waist, which would have pressed the hottest, wettest part of her against the neediest part of him.

But he'd have lost it on the spot. Instead, he held her still and whipped the T-shirt off her. Then bent to a gloriously full, high breast, whispering her name as he rubbed his jaw along the plump curve.

In response, she fisted her fingers in his hair and did her best to make him prematurely bald.

“Answer me,” he said, and ran his tongue over her nipple. “Can anyone else make you feel this way?”

Taylor tried to respond, honest to God she did, even though her body was tightening, tightening, tightening, lost in desperate need. “No.” She tried to concentrate even as he drove her toward the very edge. “No one else makes me feel like this.” She gasped as he swirled his tongue over her other pebbled nipple. “N-no one. Ty is just…”

He sucked her into his mouth at the same time he slid a finger into her, and Taylor cried out, her thoughts scattering into nothing.

“Ty is just…” he repeated for her, doing something with his finger that made her just about swallow her tongue.

“He's…” She struggled to concentrate. “I…” He added another finger to the first, and then his thumb got into the action, slowly skimming over her swollen, wet flesh. Her entire body quivered, so close—

“You…what, Taylor?”

Oh, those fingers! “He's like my brother!”

He went utterly still. “Your…brother?”

“He's marrying my best friend.” Licking her dry lips, she stared up at the man who had two fingers inside her, his mouth on her breast and held her on the very edge of an orgasm in a way no one had ever dared.

She wanted that orgasm!

She was also falling in love with him. Damn it,
damn it, not all the way in love, just a little tiny bit. But even a little tiny bit was bad. There would be no one else for her, she knew in a moment of clarity, it was this man, and as he pressed down with his thumb and wriggled those amazingly talented fingers inside her, it hit her as hard and fast as the explosive orgasm did.

When her breath finally shuddered back into her lungs, when she could breathe again, she released her death grip on Mac's shirt and fell back on the table.

“More?” he asked.

“Lots more.” She waited while his gaze met hers, knowing that if she couldn't tell him how she really felt, she could at least tell him this. “No one else makes me feel this way, Mac.” Her breathing still hadn't returned to normal, and he ran a finger over the pulse she knew raced at the base of her neck. She caught his fingers in hers. “I never let them.” With a slow roll of her hips, she smiled, determined to keep this light, determined
not
to let him see she'd started the fall. “Now tell me you have a condom in your pocket.”

“I have a condom in my pocket.” He reached into said pocket and let out a grim smile. “This time I have three.”

There was something deliciously distracting and
sinfully wicked about having the rough wood at her back and Mac, still fully dressed at her front. Just as there was something incredibly touching about the way he drew his fingers down her torso, followed by his mouth, his eyes closed as he worshipped her body with everything he had. It tightened her throat and brought her back around to the terrifying thoughts of forever, watching him make love to her slowly, thoroughly…and yet she couldn't refuse him, not when he reared up and stripped off his shirt, undid his jeans, then tenderly sank into her, not when he started a devastating rhythm matched with a kiss so sweet and deep she never wanted it to end, and not when he finally nudged them both over so that they exploded together.

When it was over, he fell on her, pressing her into the wood. He was hot, heavy, and she held on to him, wanting his weight, wanting his heat, and wanting it so much she clung, just a little, when she never clung. And right then, still gasping for breath, legs still hooked around his thighs, she realized the truth.

She wasn't just a little bit in love.

There was no such thing as a
little
bit in love.

Nope, she'd gone and fallen all the way.

A
TTEMPTING TO WORK
when one's head was screwed up was a bad idea. All day long Mac passed that work table in the downstairs unit, and like Pavlov's salivating dog, he got a hard-on from just the sight of it.

Taylor had vanished, and he went back and forth between looking for her like a pathetic love-struck teen, and wanting to run like hell.

Swamped by various crews and their questions, he did neither, and by the time he went home, he still hadn't seen her again.

But late that night, she came to his door with a soft knock and a warm, sexy smile.

She came the next night as well. And the next.

The nights she didn't, he went to her. And for two weeks they made wild, passionate, devastating love until dawn, and then silently went their own way.

No strings attached.

At least that's what he knew Taylor would have claimed if he'd asked her, but he didn't ask. He wasn't that big a fool. He could see, damn it, and
what he saw was so much emotion reflected in her eyes he nearly drowned in them every time he looked at her.

She loved him. Christ, she loved him.

He was torn between ecstasy and sheer terror.

One night she showed up at his door wearing a siren red dress that made him drool. The back was a series of strings criss-crossed over her slim spine, the front was little more than a low dipping bodice snug to the top of her thighs.

Her mile long legs were capped by matching red strappy sandals with heels that put them at eye level.

Shutting the door behind her, she leaned back against the wood and shot him a little smile that made his penis jerk to attention. “Hi,” she said in a sultry voice.

“Hi, yourself,” he said, feeling underdressed in nothing but nylon running shorts.

With a saucy smile, she put her hands on his arms and spun them, reversing their positions so
he
was against the door.

With a little laugh, he said, “So I'm guessing
you're
in charge tonight—”

With a yank, she hauled his shorts down to his ankles.

“Tay—”

She dropped to her knees. Gliding her hands up
the front of his legs, she stared at his body, parting her lips thoughtfully. “You want me, big boy?”

More than his next breath, but since she was eye level with the proof, he figured the point moot.

She leaned forward and, as if he were her favorite flavor of lollipop, she licked him.

His knees nearly buckled.

“How much do you want me, Mac?”

They'd been together nearly every night, and nearly every night they'd been silent during their searing, erotic, sexual encounters, unless “harder!”, “more!”, “yes, God, yes!” and “don't stop!” counted.

So it shocked him when he reached down to pull her up, intending to carry her off to the bedroom for more hot and fast sex that she held him off.

“Remember when you had me on your work table?” Still on her knees, she looked up at him. “When you asked me if anyone else makes me feel like you did? If anyone else made me quiver and ache, the way I do when I'm with you?”

Oh, yeah, he remembered.

She wrapped her fingers around him, and he couldn't quite contain the rough sound that rumbled from his chest.

With a slow stroke that made him quiver, she watched him carefully. “So I'm asking you
now…you've had the time to figure it out. Does anyone besides me…” She stroked again, then bent and gave yet another mind-blowing stroke of her tongue. “Anyone at all, make you feel like this? Does anyone else make you tremble and ache, the way you do with me?”

He stared down at her mouth only an inch from where he wanted it most and felt the shock of her question mix in with the haze of overwhelming lust she'd spun around him.

Lifting her gaze, she gave him a smile a little shaky around the edges, and he realized she was not as confident and as in charge as she wanted him to think, not even close. “Taylor—”

“It's a simple question, Mac. Does anyone else make you feel like this, yes…or no.”

“Call me slow,” he said, dazed by sensory overload as he hauled her to her feet. “But I'm finally getting it.” Hands on her arms he looked into her eyes. “You're not holding back on me because of Jeff. You're not holding back on me because of money. You think… My God,” he said on a mirthless laugh, and shook his head. “You think I'm still in love with my ex-wife.”

“Ariel.”

“I remember her name,” he said tightly, and kicking his shorts off his ankles, he stalked naked to his
kitchen, where he grabbed a tall glass of water for his suddenly very dry throat.

“I'm sorry,” she said from the doorway, arms crossed, face miserable. “I shouldn't have pressed you that way. I know what it's like to love someone and then lose them. You idealize them to the point where no one else can compare. I did that with Jeff.” She swallowed hard. “I compared you to him, and that wasn't fair.”

“Taylor.” He shook his head. He let out a laugh, and then another, and then weak for some odd reason, he sank to a chair to laugh some more.

She went from miserable to furious. Chin high, eyes flashing, she whizzed by him on her very determined way to the back door. Snagging her arm, he hauled her down and into his lap, where she wriggled and fought him. “Shh, stop.” Damn, he should have put on his shorts to protect himself. “Stop…I'm sorry.”

“You're laughing at me.”

“Are you kidding? No.
No,
” he repeated softly, holding her still. “I'm laughing at
me,
because I'm a jerk. I didn't know that's what you thought, that I was hung up on Ariel. That I idealized her.” As it was hard to admit the truth with her sparkling, accusing eyes on him, he tucked her face into the crook of his neck, set his chin on her head and spoke into
the quiet night. “I met her at a town council meeting, did I ever tell you that?”

“No. Mac—”

“She was the friend of a friend's daughter.”

“You don't have to—”

“Shut up,” he said. “I was young, and dazzled. She was sweet and warm and loving, and wanted me for me, and not who my parents were.”

“So you got married.”

“We eloped. It was what she wanted, and I was touched because I'd told her how I intended to make it on my own without my parents' help, and I thought she was showing me she wanted that, too.”

Taylor shifted in his arms so that she could see into his face. “I don't want you to apologize for loving her, Mac. I love it that you've loved before, that you're not afraid to admit it. And deep down, I'm even a little flattered that you compared me to her, that it made caring about me so hard because you loved her so much.”

“Really?” He closed his eyes, let out a harsh laugh. “You're really not going to like the rest of this then.”

“I'm…not?”

“No.” He drew a deep breath. “Ariel started asking about money, wanting me to get some from my parents. She wanted a big, new house. She wanted a new car. New clothes from Europe. She wanted par
ties. She wanted, wanted, wanted, and started to hate me for not giving in.”

“Oh, Mac. I—”

He put a finger to her lips. “I have to get the rest of this out, Taylor, and with you looking at me like that, with your heart in your eyes and your body sitting on my very naked one, I'm feeling far more inclined to see how strong this table is than tell you the damn truth.”

“Tell me,” she said, and bit her lip, ostensibly to keep herself quiet.

Mac wondered if she'd be so pliant in a minute when she heard the rest. “She decided I had been a mistake, a big one. She went after other men—wealthy, affluent men who could give her what she wanted.”

“She left you,” she breathed, and her eyes hardened. “Forget it. I am nothing like her, nothing.”

“I know that,” he said, and sighed wearily.

“There's…more?”

Oh yeah, there was more. “When she picked out the right guy for herself, she ran up every credit card I had, emptied every bank account and screwed me over for the building loan I had been trying to get to start my first renovation project, all as a goodbye present.”

Taylor's eyes widened even as they filled. “My God, how could she? She loved you.”

“She never loved me.”

Her eyes never left his. “And…there's still more isn't there?”

“Yes.” Mac's heart started beating heavily, he'd never said the words out loud before. “When she went to file for divorce, she found out she was pregnant. And…she didn't want to be. I didn't want her anymore, but the baby. God. I wanted that baby.” To his horror, his eyes burned. “She, um…aborted.”

Taylor let out a soft sound of disbelief. Sliding her hands into his hair, she put her forehead to his, offering neither empty platitudes or meaningless compassion.

He wanted neither.

She gave him the only thing he did want, herself. Slowly, gently, she put her mouth to his, kissing first one corner, then the other, and then pulled back, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I want to love you, Mac. Not wild, up-against-the-wall sex, not on this table…I want to take you to your bed and love you until you forget.”

He looked at her,
in
her, feeling his entire chest constrict at what he saw in her eyes. Once upon a time he'd have said it couldn't be done, no one could make him forget, but as he stood with her in his
arms, as he strode down the hallway toward the bed, he thought maybe, just maybe, she was the woman to do it.

 

T
AYLOR WOKE UP
just before dawn, and with a deep sigh sat up. Time to go, just like every other dawn for the past few weeks. The best nights of her life, and she paid for them by having to get up before the sun so that neither of them panicked and felt claustro phobic.

Well, she didn't feel claustrophobic, and hadn't, not once during a single one of those nights, humming with pleasure in Mac's arms, and not last night.

Last night…she'd held Mac for hours and had wondered how anyone on this earth could have treated him as Ariel had. If Taylor had been lucky enough for someone to love her like that, for
Mac
to love her like that, she would have lived every single day loving him back with everything she had.

Her eyes filled thinking about it, because she knew now why he resisted so much, just as she now knew things wouldn't change. He cared about her, no doubt. No one could make love to her the way he did and not care deeply. But that was only part of intimacy, and she didn't see it going much further. They were in Mac's comfort zone now, and there they'd
stay. If the only option to her was walking away…well, she wouldn't. Couldn't.

Putting her feet on the cold wooden floor, she went to stand up.

And was stopped by a big, warm hand to her wrist. “Without even waking me?” came his sleep-roughened, sexy-as-hell voice.

He lay sprawled on his belly, his broad shoulders and long, long legs taking up nearly the entire mattress. Only seconds before she'd been right there with him, and she was shocked by the immense yearning to leap back in and snuggle tight.

If she did, if she so much as touched him right now, she'd lose it. “Got work, Slick,” she said, and lightly slapped his very nice butt.

“No, you don't.” Without letting go of her, he pushed up, sat back against the headboard and tugged.

She fell against that warm chest, and had to close her eyes when she braced her hands against it. “Mac—”

“Don't go.”

She tried to wriggle free. “I need to.”

“No, you don't. You're running out of here because you think that's what I want.” He waited until she opened her eyes, helping her along by putting his hands on her face. “You don't want to scare me,”
he said in a terrifyingly gentle voice. “You don't want to worry me with your feelings—”

Again she tried to get up. “Mac—”

“No, listen. I have to say this. I had a dream. You were gone.” A spasm of pain crossed his features as he held her still. “And I was back to the way things were. Alone. I hated it. It felt cold without you, Taylor. Empty.”

“It…did?”

“It's all happened so slowly, I didn't realize…”

Her heart stopped. “What happened so slowly?”

He blew out a breath. “Before you, I told myself I never wanted to share myself again, and that included my bed. I told myself I would never open up to a woman, that I would never want, need or ache for one to distraction.”

“I know, Mac. God. I know—”

“But I was wrong. Life can't be lived like that. You taught me that. Only you, Taylor.”

She stopped trying to get free and stared at him. “I'm sorry. My heart just stopped, which means I'm not getting any blood to my brain, so I must have heard you wrong. Could you…”

“I love you, Taylor.” His smile, a bit wobbly, jump-started her heart. His thumbs stroked her jaw, helping with blood flow. “Did you hear that?”

“I…yes,” she whispered, stunned. “Yes.”

“I love you with all I've got, and I hope to hell you feel something close to that for me, too, because I don't think I can go through this again and have you not feel it back….” He stared at her, then hissed out a breath. “Could you say something here? Anything?”

She put her fingers to his mouth, and through a half laugh, half sob, put her forehead to his and managed to repeat his words back. “I love you. God, Mac, I love you with all I've got. And I've hoped like hell you felt
something
back, too, because I
know
I can't go through this again.” She let out a shaky breath. “And not have you feel it back.”

Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed so hard she could hardly draw a breath, but who needed air? Not her, she had Mac, she had his love, she had everything she could ever want, forget breathing.